1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a driver management method, a driver management apparatus, and a program for driver management, and more particularly to a driver management method, a driver management apparatus, and a program for driver management that manage a driver of an output apparatus according a state of the output apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various consumables are used in an output apparatus such as a printer. These consumables include paper, toners, inks, drums, and staples. It is necessary to supply these consumables as needed when the output apparatus is in use.
There are upper limits for the quantity of the consumables that can be supplied in the output apparatus. As a result, in some usage of the output apparatus, there may be a case in which the consumables cannot be supplied sufficiently to the output apparatus. In such a case, the output apparatus becomes useless due to the lack of the consumables. Thus, it may occur that a job of a high importance cannot be executed due to a frequent execution of jobs of low importance.
In view of the foregoing problem, a technique has been proposed in which the consumption of consumables having limited quantity is restrained by providing an output apparatus with a user list so that the output apparatus checks the priority of print jobs in terms of consumables on the user list when warning for a shortage of the consumables is issued, suspends an output of a print job of less priority, and notifies the terminal apparatus which has issued the print job of the suspension of the print job output (refer to Japanese patent application publication No. 11-165451).
In the Japanese patent application publication No. 11-165451, however, since the output apparatus is provided with the user list to determine whether or not the printing is performed, there are such problems that the cost of the output apparatus is increased because a memory resource is required for holding the user list, and a user cannot know whether the printing is performed before issuing the print job. Further, when this technique is applied to a network printer, a job which is not to be printed is transmitted over a network, resulting in an increase in a unnecessary network traffic.